Dear Mr.

Part One: The Poetry Guy

Dear Mr.

I first remember seeing you in one the long hallways of our labyrinthine university. Someone told me who you were. “The poetry guy.” You wore a green button-down shirt, brown pants (did you have more than one or did you just wear the same clothes most of the time?). You had crooked teeth, and muddy hair that stuck up all over the place. You always had Clif bars and a bottle of water with you, in your left-wing man purse. You were rakishly OK-looking, your smile was great, your laugh was ridiculous.

You had a tattoo that you kept concealed under your sleeve…was it a fucking mermaid, or just a blurry pinup girl?

I decided you might have magical powers. I wanted everything to have magical powers back then. It felt worth investigating. So I signed up for your class. I can’t remember what the title of the class was that year, but it was brilliant. I was excited on the first day, when I realised we’d be reading our work to each other, and to you.

I felt like this was an opportunity to sing a little bit for a tiny piece of world.

When I heard you read, I couldn’t imagine listening to anyone else reading poetry as perfectly ever again. Your voice was gravelly, and funny, and tinged with uncontrived melancholy. There was coffee, and long-ago smoked cigarettes, and even a hint of Baudelaire’s old-world opium. It stayed with me. I can hear it now, in my head, thousands of miles away.

I could tell from the poems you gave the class to read that we had things in common. Abstract, metaphysical things, like an affinity for smells, dirt and forests, a love for the scrappy creatures at the fringes of the wilds. A certain mischevious sweetness that wasn’t available to the casual observer. This likeness, I felt, confirmed my initial instincts about you.

I started showing up to class a bit early, so I could get a seat two away from yours. I didn’t want to be too obvious. No one sits next to the professor. Ew.

I wore lipstick to class.

I remember reading a poem, in front of the class, laden with innuendo, liquid suggestions and a challenge, a challenge to the listener. A bead of sweat ran down the back of my neck when I finished, and I sank into my chair and exhaled as if I had just run a few blocks at a dead sprint. I looked over the edge of my paper at you. You had laughed at the naughtiest line.

Finally, one day, you told me that my poetry was good, that it was worth working on. So, I asked for you to help me with my work. In my mind, I took it seriously. In my heart, I just wanted to sit with you.

The first time we met up, you brought a book to read together. It was Poemland, by Chelsea Minnis. The cover was pink fur. I mean come on, how could you not have known? It’s still my favourite.

It matched my style of writing (and being) in a way that I found suspiciously on-point. It was goofy, and a little dorky, but sexy, kinky, destructive, and irreverant. It was on the border of too intimate to read to a student. Actually, it was perfect. We swapped pages, reading to each other.

I gave up whatever I could find in those moments. I was convinced you were trying to communicate.

We’d sit on the grass, and I’d swallow my secret. My words got cheekier, more impatient. Every poem was me giving my most important gifts away. I’d tell myself, you can’t live like this anymore, just tell him the truth, it’s going to drive you crazy. Or worse, I’d graduate without ever saying a word.

I wrote every single one of my poems for you.

It got close to the end of senior year. There wasn’t any time left, and I felt like I was at my poetic peak. I was going to have to do something drastic. The months of mooning around, imaginary conversations, turning down dates, and generally being insane had to end sometime, for better or worse.

So, I wrote a poem about you. I poured what I had gleaned from careful observation, inference, and investigation into every line. I wrapped words around the edges of lines, linked sounds to silences, and breathed life into the spaces around images. I left the sass out of it, and tried to be honest. I smashed my own earth and pine, fuck-ups and darkness and stale alcohol into that fucking poem. I was self-referential. I came here to describe the animal. And, when we finally sat down at the benches, before I began to read, I finally said it.

“I wrote this poem for you.”

You said nothing.

When I finished reading it, I waited.

And just like always, as if I had never said anything out of the ordinary, you simply critiqued the work as if it wasn’t what it so obviously was. You plowed straight through the crystalline bridges of lifeblood and hope that held that paper snowflake together, and let it fall into soggy mundanity.

You didn’t even say thank you.

I thought you were a coward. I still do. Even if you didn’t want to acknowledge my feelings, you could at least have given a damn about the fact that I wanted to know you. That I did know you, at least a little bit. I know I was dead on with my words. My arrows never miss.

Keeping the status quo was worse than being overt and losing your company forever, so I said nothing more.

And then, confusing me further, you invited me to continue working with you over the summer, post-graduation.

Our first and only meeting after university ended, we met in the city at a coffee shop. It was humid, but cool. It was a rare cloudy day in the city, grey washing out the colours of the brightly painted art galleries, cafés, and hipster shops along the main drag. I had spent more time than was reasonable on making sure I looked great.

When you showed up, you looked like hell. I mean, your hair was always sticking up all over the fucking place, but this was different. Your eyes were glazed, your skin mottled, and you seemed older than was even possible.

We read poetry, of course. I don’t remember what. I don’t even know if I brought anything of my own to read. Everything felt stilted, and bleached, and subtly ruined.

I tried to ask how you were doing. At some stage in the chit-chat, right before I did, you ran out of bullshit.

“My partner is moving out,” you mumbled.

I could tell that I was the first person you had told. It might even have happened that morning. I almost heard the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass, and a hub cap spinning hyperbolically on the pavement. My brain came temporarily unplugged.

What does a 22 year old girl say to a 40-something year old man who looks like he’s about to cry, because his partner of ten years has left him?

Why did you come to meet me? I can’t assume you felt it was so important that it couldn’t have been moved. You must have wanted to see someone. Was there no one else? Did you actually want to talk to me, of all people? I can’t believe that you did.

I left. I don’t remember what excuse I made, but I gave you a hug and off I went.

I couldn’t go home after that.

I drove through the city to the sea, and I got out and walked along the boardwalk, and across the sand, and burst into tears while some seagulls fought over a french fry. What a stupid place Los Angeles is.

It’s been four years and I’m sure your beard has gone grey. It was on the borderline when I left Los Angeles.

I don’t write poetry anymore. I probably should. But you’re the poet, not me. I just caught the spirit that rides on your back for a while, and maybe I didn’t do the best job.

It sounds like I care a lot about this series of events. And I do, but I also hadn’t thought about it for a long, long time. I can’t believe this had as much of an effect on me as it did. I’m still weird inside about it.

Now, I stop and think about what would have resolved this situation in a sane way. And I finally figured it out. What would have beautifully finished it, with a smile and a wave from the far off deck of a boat.

You should write a poem for me.

As some encouragement, here’s the first poem I’ve written in ages. Obviously, it’s for you.

Emerging backwards from the brilliant backwater of the brain, the bodily egress from exit to entrance rings like a familiar dial tone.

Picking up the phone, finally, I rise, meniscus fading into the carpet. Placenta dissolving between fingers and toes.

I am returned.

Casting a stone from here, into the reflection pool filled with sharks’ teeth.

A map, to the desert.

I went first, and never saw you.

Now you dwell on the outskirts of the poppies’ folds.

Instead, I hailed a ride, taniwha emerging with kelp dangling from tentacles, and paid with my birthright, so accidental.

I’d see you again, pins and needles.